Untoward

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00O1nPzMsgA

Is this how love opens in a failing world

a pulse that lifts, collapses, and lifts again?

I watch your smoky fingers unspool,  

swirling in the air, spelling your arrival

the way only the dead know how

Now everything hushes

the darkness is rehearsed

and I wait for light like a trespasser

A dream lodged in the timber of the house

wet with a northern breath

a life soaked through, foreign to my skin

I live inside its stitching 

pressed into a shape 

that’s hard to see

Here I am with you

filling my lungs with stale air 

the wind gathers what can be taken

leaves the heaviness behind

Your eyes have hardened into knowing

as your hands travel the map of me

where my softness once lived

Life removes me in sections

first this, then that

until I'm remade without consent

no womb, no breasts

a body revised into neutrality

And still you take me,

piece by careful piece

urging me upward

toward a courage I never asked for

untoward and nameless

I think all this today, on the day

you entered the world

so long ago, so unplaced

lighting a small flame

wishing on your behalf

Your proximity, your distance

we meet each other halfway

with a slow turning kiss

A tiny laugh

a memory spills open

we move closer

increment by silent increment

until we fall or reach the sky